The First Non-Funeral

The first non-funeral I ever heard about was for a relative I had never wanted to claim. She was an evil-soul, mean-spirited, a cruel paragon of human non-virtue. When I was a child I would have rather visited the dentist, and I probably have the worst, sorest teeth in the universe so that is spelling it out. She had specifically asked for no funeral, and this was decades before non-funerals were popular. I knew why. She had alienated the neighbors, and the relatives, and I mean ALL the relatives, and some of us are particularly impossible to alienate. In lieu of a funeral, there was a reception for her. It was attended by four people. Her two children, one whom she had treated horribly, a drinking buddy, who was inebriated, and possibly on something else, and my sister who does not count as she is a ghoul about funerals, excited to add this to her amazing I-go-to-every-funeral-in-this-town count which at that time was in the six thousand range. I was in town that day, sitting in a chair, pointedly not going to this non-funeral.